I attended the BlogWell conference in Cincinnati yesterday (You can see my live coverage of the event at the SocialMedia.org blog).
In the first panel of the day, Anitra Marsh, Global External Relations manager at P&G Beauty Care shared key takeaways and learnings from several P&G Beauty case studies. At Boot Camp Digital we did work with P&G (not beauty) on some of their early social media and community management work, and these steps show how P&G is evolving in their thinking about social media.
Step 1: Know Your Consumer
The first step that Anitra talked about was the importance knowing your consumer and what they are doing online. This is similar to how we at Boot Camp Digital encourage companies to start building their social media strategy. To do this effectively you have to spend a lot of time getting to know who your consumers really are as a person. What are their interests and where do they spend their time online?
P&G Examples:
For example with Olay, consumers have more choices than ever and they need help selecting online. Olay started a new website last year called www.olayforyou.com which takes customization to a new level. It provides a custom diagnosis for consumers based on behavior as well as skin type.
Another Olay program that highlights the deep consumer insights is Olay Pro-X. They had a core insight that consumers are very in to health and wellness and spend a lot of time online researching. Olay Pro-X partnered with WebMD to provide content on SkinCare, since WebMD didn’t have a skin care site. The result is that WebMD skin care includes editorial content from the Doctors at Olay including blogs and videos.
Step 2: Shift from Holistic Communications to Interdependent Model
Anitra stressed the importance of using an interdependent model for creating messaging between online and offline. In holistic communications the message is often an advertising message that is shared across different touch-points and mediums. In the interdependent model the content is created specifically for different channels, and in some cases the web content is driving the traditional content.
P&G Examples
On Herbal Essences this has been used to take consumer testimonials from the web and use them in traditional media.
Hugo Boss presented a unique challenge since the consumer is fickle and there is a lot of clutter. Hugo launched a contest for consumers to design bottles for their “Army Flask” campaign – there were over 13,000 entrants and many of the designs have been featured in print magazines and on billboards. In the new world with an interdependent model the content moves from online to traditional media.
Step 3: Continue Listening and Participate Choicefully
The next step is to continue listening and participate where it makes sense. Big brands can’t participate in every conversation about their brand. It is important to monitor all of the conversations but to be strategic about where specifically you are going to engage.
One of the key learnings in creating community managers was that tone and authenticity are key to success. Community managers must speak in a human tone. Anitra shared that their experience was that the community manager had to be a passionate brand enthusiast – their specific role or function in the organization wasn’t as important. It was also important that they could relate to the target consumer and were a legitimate part of that community.
P&G Examples
Pantene is one of the first brands to launch a community manager (the Pantene Beauty Maven). Her role is to go out, listen and engage with consumers. P&G learned that it is extremely important to align on the key topics that they really want to engage in upfront. This helps manage logistics and approval of the content, since you can gain alignment in advance.
The community manager is just one tool but everyone should be listening online. By listening online P&G can find opportunities to improve their products. Last year they launched CoverGirl with Olay, and they noticed by comments on blogs that consumers were having trouble opening the containers. Within 48 hours they worked with Research & Development to create instructions on how to open the containers. The directions were shared back with the bloggers and there was positive feedback as bloggers were surprised that Olay cared and responded.
Step 4: Build Refreshed Messaging into the Program Up-front
The last idea is building in a refreshed message into the program up-front vs. being reactive after the fact. Plan to adjust your message track based on events that you can anticipate (seasons, weather, etc) and be open to changes based on opportunities as they arise.
To support this P&G has a conversation calendar and they know what they will want to talk about so they can pre-work those with legal. For emerging discussions they have a multi-functional team with PR and Legal that can respond more quickly. Having the team already in place helps speed this up.
P&G Example
A recent example on Cover Girl was a program involving Cover Girl supporting Clean Water. There were opportunities to refresh the message and the brand stayed nimble enough to incorporate live-time events. Shortly after the launch the earthquake in Haiti hit, which brought more awareness to clean drinking water.
From BlogWell: Graco: Communicating with Social Media in a Time of Crisis
This is the last of my posts from the BlogWell conference (a conference covering big brands and how they use social media, held in Cincinnati last week). Kelly Voelker, Brand Manager, PR & Social Media at Graco shared their strategies for dealing with a PR Crisis during a recall (side note – what can Toyota learn from this?).
The Situation
On Jan 20, 2010, at 7:00am the news of the recall went out over the newswire. Graco announced a recall of 1.5 million strollers worldwide after 7 injuries were reported. The recall was only for a few specific models (not for the entire line-up). The story was posted immediately on a large number of national news sites.
How Graco Responded
Being Pro-Active
Graco pro-actively shared their message with specific communication on their blog, YouTube, Twitter, Facebook and a dedicated Web Page. They created a landing page with specific information since they knew that consumers might have trouble getting through to customer care.
Reaching out to Influencers
They also reached out to top influencers to help share information. They sent an email prior to the news release to a variety of brand ambassadors who also have blogs. The bloggers appreciated getting the news first and helped to share information.
Dealing with Negativity
There was a lot of negative feedback. Here are some of the tips to deal with negativity:
One specific example was a woman named “Michelle” – she tweeted to the Chicago Sun Times, was responding to other consumers on the Graco Facebook page and actively shared negativity. Graco had a senior person respond to her personally and it turned her around. She then shared positive experiences across all of the same channels. She was happy that Graco wanted to help and reached out to her.
This is consistent with what we hear time and again. Often those who complain the loudest can become your biggest advocates with a little time and attention.
Key Learnings
The way that the social media team is structured at Graco helps. There is a social media team that is made up of multi-functional people who are passionate about the brand (they don’t have communications backgrounds). They were all briefed in advance and were told how to respond to issues.
How did you work with your social media agency during this recall?
Graco really used their agency as a tool to listen. They were keeping an eye on the conversation to help us comb through the conversation and respond when needed. They don’t respond directly – they provide council and listening. Graco owned the communications.
What do you do about the crazies, nutjobs and wackos and people in that category?
Set expectations with your executives that this will happen. Reach out and let them know that you are there to talk to them. Ask them what they want — be there to talk to them about their issues and deal with it on a case by case basis.